it’s for a widget, so it’s cached and only updated once a day.
i don’t like changing source in a plugin – next update will kill it and i have to reinsert it.
is it very hard for you to insert this query as new %var%? maybe as %toppost|numbers_to_show% or %toppage|5|categorie% ?
would be very very nice 🙂

I do not know WP SlimStat, but from what you describe, the problem will be the same, all display of stats requires at least one SQL query through the entire database and thus slow down the page display. Whether done by SlimStat or other will not change anything.

Widgets are inherited from the Original StatPress. I personally never use them, i keep it like the original Statpress.

The problem of widgets stats, is that they slow down the display of web pages.

I do not know this technique od widgets-cache, it’s interesting, you have sources?